Lawrence Kavenagh (c. 1810 – 13 October 1846) was an Irish-Australian convict bushranger who, with Martin Cash and George Jones, escaped from Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land, in late 1842. The three men took to bushranging for a six-month period, robbing homesteads and inns with seeming impunity. Kavenagh was tried for serious crimes on five occasions. He was executed in 1846 at Norfolk Island.
Biography Early life and transportation Lawrence Kavenagh was born circa 1810 in County Wicklow, Ireland. His birth-place was likely either Newbridge (now called Avoca) or nearby Rathdrum.Two sources from 1842 show either option as Kavenagh's "native place": (1) Register (Van Diemen's Land), Description lists of convicts convicted locally or arriving on non-convict ships (1842), page 111; Lawrence Kavanagh; age 33; "New Bridge, County Wicklow" (Ancestry.com); (2) Indents of Convicts Locally convicted or Transported from Other Colonies (Van Diemen's Land), Marian Watson indent 1842; Lawrence Kavenagh (Police No. 860); age 30; native place: "Redrum, Wicklow".
In 1828, Kavenagh and his sister, Catherine, were convicted of burglary in Dublin. They were both sentenced to death, commuted to transportation for life. Lawrence Kavenagh was transported to New South Wales aboard the Fergusson with 40 other convicts, arriving in Sydney on 26 March 1829.
When he arrived in the colony of New South Wales in 1829 Lawrence Kavenagh was assigned to work for Edward Reiley at Raby, in the Campbelltown area southwest of Sydney.
In February 1832 Kavenagh received forty lashes for insolence and disorderly conduct.Conduct Registers of Male Convicts arriving in the period of the Assignment System (Convict Department, Van Diemen’s Land), Kavenagh Lawrence, "Extract from Sydney Records". From September 1832 he was assigned to road gangs, but soon afterwards Kavenagh was reported to have absconded from the No. 20 Road Gang.
On 8 February 1833 Kavenagh and Domick McCoy appeared before the Campbelltown Quarter Sessions, charged with assaulting Martin Grady with the intent to rob him. As reported, Kavenagh, McCoy and a third man had stopped Grady as he was driving his cart on the Liverpool Road and assaulted him "with sticks". Grady drew "a pair of sharp shears" from his pocket to defend himself. The unnamed assailant ran away and Grady managed to wound Kavenagh and McCoy before they "escaped into the bush". The pair were found guilty and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years.Campbelltown Quarter Sessions, The Currency Lad (Sydney), 16 February 1833, page 3. Kavanagh was initially sent to the Phoenix prison hulk and then transported to Norfolk Island in March 1833.
Norfolk Island At Norfolk Island in May 1833 Kavenagh spent fourteen days in irons for "refusing to assist in getting up the Boats". In April 1834 he was sentenced to seven days in the cells for "rioting in Gaol". In January (year not recorded) he received 150 lashes for "attempting to run away".
Lawrence Kavenagh spent nine years at the Norfolk Island penal settlement on this first occasion.In 1843 Mr. Justice Montagu of the Van Diemen's Land Supreme Court, in summarising Lawrence Kavenagh’s criminal record, stated: "He had been for nine years at Norfolk Island, where the very worst of characters were congregated"; in Supreme Court. – Criminal Side, Colonial Times (Hobart), 19 September 1843, page 3. The last few years of Kavenagh’s incarceration on Norfolk Island was during the administration of Alexander Maconochie whose more benevolent methods of prisoner control focused more on prisoner rehabilitation than punishment. During Maconochie’s four-year term as Commandant of the penal settlement, over fourteen hundred doubly-convicted men were discharged from Norfolk Island.
The precise date that Lawrence Kavenagh departed from Norfolk Island is not known. Some sources claim he escaped from the island, but this is unsupported by any evidence.There were a number of escape attempts from Norfolk Island in the period 1833 to 1842, but only one was successful (to the extent of leaving the island). On 1 December 1840 six prisoners escaped in a whale boat; details of the escapees (including their names) were continuously published in the New South Wales Government Gazette [see example: The undermentioned Prisoners…, 22 January 1841 (issue No. 6), page 123]. The fate of these escaped prisoners was much speculated upon, but they probably perished at sea (see example: Norfolk Island, 12 February 1841, page 4). A possible explanation for his appearance in Sydney in January 1842 is that he had been discharged under Maconochie’s regime, having served nine years of a fourteen-year sentence. An alternative explanation is that Kavenagh was transferred as a prisoner from Norfolk Island to the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney.An entry in a Convict Indent for Lawrence Kavenagh after he was transported to Van Diemen’s Land reads: "ret’d from Norfolk Island" (which could be construed either as a free man or a prisoner); Indents of Convicts Locally convicted or Transported from Other Colonies, page 209 (third entry); see also Lawrence Kavenagh (the left-hand side of the same entry).
Return to Sydney By January 1842, Kavenagh had returned to Sydney from Norfolk Island; whether he arrived as a free man or not, by mid-January he was incarcerated at the Hyde Park Barracks. By the 1840s the Hyde Park Barracks was being used for housing dangerous criminals.
In 1842, the barracks were under the control of the notorious Deputy Superintendent, Timothy Lane, under whose watch the place "had descended into a dreaded place of brutality" where harsh punishment was the means of control and cruelty and corruption was entrenched among the convict officials.
On 19 January 1842, Kavenagh received 36 lashes for "cutting his Irons". On 27 January Kavenagh and another convict, Thomas Brown, escaped from the watch-house at the Hyde Park Barracks.Twenty Pounds Reward, or a Conditional Pardon, Australasian Chronicle (Sydney), 10 February 1842, page 4. On the evening of the escape the two men reached Double Bay and stole a fishing boat, in the process "threatening the life of a female" who sought to prevent them from doing so. The focus of the search for the escapees then shifted to the North Shore and the vicinity of Broken Bay. The next day it was reported that Kavanagh and Brown had robbed the house of Mrs. Reibey, Captain Innes’ mother-in-law, at Lane Cove where they stole various items including a musket.The Hyde Park Runaways, Sydney Herald, 1 February 1842, pg. 3.
The colonial government offered a reward of ten pounds for the apprehension of either of the two convicts by "any free person"; for the apprehension of either absconder "by a prisoner of the crown" the reward offered was "the allowance of a conditional pardon. The published description of Lawrence Kavenagh was: height, 5 feet 7½ inches; complexion, "ruddy fresh"; brown hair, blue eyes and a "flat nose"; missing his "right little finger", "small scar on back of left hand, and on centre of forehead". Kavanagh and Brown established a base on the North Shore of the harbour where they concealed the articles they had "obtained by plunder".The Bushrangers, Sydney Free Press, 15 February 1842, page 3. The bushrangers, during their brief period of “committing depredations in the neighbourhood of Sydney” moved freely from one side of the harbour to the other.
On February 11 the Colonial Secretary, Edward Deas Thomson, Captain William Hunter, Edye Manning and Dr. Dobie were riding together along the beach at Rose Bay. Suddenly three men emerged from the bush at the edge of the bay, one of them (later identified as Kavenagh) holding a musket, prompting the riders put their horses into a canter to more quickly escape. One of the men cried out to Hunter: "If you don’t stop, by God we’ll shoot you". When Captain Hunter showed no sign of stopping Kavenagh fired two shots at him, both missing their target.Supreme Court. – Criminal Side, The Australian (Sydney), 14 April 1842, page 2.Supreme Court, Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 14 April 1842, page 2.
After this incident parties of soldiers, mounted police and constables were sent off "in various directions to scour the bush". On the following day one group of four mounted police and an aborigine searching in the vicinity of Watson’s Bay discovered footprints and traced the bushrangers to a small cave where they managed to capture Kavenagh and Brown, as well as another man named Joseph Johnstone and "a woman dressed in man’s clothes" (a runaway assigned servant of Mr. Nalder named Elizabeth Kelly). The four captives were taken to Darlinghurst Gaol.Capture of the Bushrangers, The Australian (Sydney), 15 February 1842, page 2. Kavenagh told Captain Innes that during his period of freedom "he had prowled about" the Hyde Park Barracks Watch-house, armed and disguised with glasses and wearing a white hat, hoping to "have a shot at" the Deputy Superintendent, Timothy Lane.Domestic Intelligence, Sydney Free Press, 17 February 1842, page 3.
On 12 April 1842 Lawrence Kavenagh, Thomas Brown and Joseph Johnson appeared before the New South Wales Supreme Court before Mr. Justice Burton, charged with illegally possessing firearms and having feloniously shot at William Hunter "with intent to murder him". The men pleaded not guilty. After the prosecution had presented its case, Lawrence Kavenagh spoke in his own defence. He claimed "he had never intended to do acts of personal violence when he took to the bush", but he was compelled to do so "by the tyranny he had experienced whilst in Hyde Park Barracks", adding that the tyranny he had endured at Norfolk Island "was nothing to that which he had experienced in Sydney". The jury returned guilty verdicts "without leaving the box". The three convicted men were sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land for life.Law Intelligence, Teetotaller and General Newspaper (Sydney), 16 April 1842, page 3.
On 30 May 1842 Lawrence Kavenagh, along with forty-two other prisoners of the Crown (including George Jones),Indents of Convicts Locally convicted or Transported from Other Colonies (Van Diemen's Land), Marian Watson indent 1842; George Jones (Police No. 1250). was transported from Sydney to Van Diemen’s Land aboard the schooner Marian Watson, arriving at Hobart on 8 June, from where he was taken to the Port Arthur penal settlement.Shipping Intelligence, Colonial Observer (Sydney), 1 June 1842, page 276.Ship News, Colonial Times (Hobart), 14 June 1842, page 2.
Escape from Port Arthur
Towards the end of 1842, while in a work gang carting stone from the Port Arthur quarry, Kavenagh met two other convicts, George Jones and Martin Cash. The three convicts had a common interest: "a strong inclination to abscond". Cash had made a previous attempt at escaping from Port Arthur, being captured within a mile of the mainland near East Bay Neck.Cash, pages 62-63. They discussed a plan of escape, and agreed to make the attempt on the afternoon of Boxing Day as the carts came up to the quarry for the first load.Cash, page 65.
On Boxing Day, 26 December 1842, the escape occurred as planned. In Martin Cash’s words: "I walked deliberately over to where [Kavenagh and Jones] were at work; fixing my eyes on them for a moment, they both instantly dropped their picks, and springing on a steep bank, were lost in a minute in the scrub, I soon following their example". Kavenagh took the lead, directing the others to where he had previously stashed a quarter of a loaf and some flour. Then the three convicts headed for the thick scrub at the foot of Mount Arthur. They decided to remain hidden in the bush for the next three days, expecting that the soldiers "would relax in their vigilance, under the impression that we had made our escape".Cash, page 66.